Parents' praise helps kids perform challenging tasks

Washington, Feb. 13 (ANI): Children, whose parents praised their efforts more than they praised them as individuals, had a more positive outlook towards challenges five years later, a new study has claimed.

The study, by researchers at the University of Chicago and Stanford University, showed that process praise - when parents praise the effort children make - leads kids to be more persistent and perform better on challenging tasks, while person praise - praising the individual - leads them to be less persistent and perform worse on such tasks.

According to the study, this is because process praise sends the message that effort and actions are the sources of success, leading kids to believe that they can improve their performance through hard work in contrast person praise sends the opposite message-that the child's ability is fixed.

Researchers taped more than fifty 1- to 3-year-olds and their parents during everyday interactions at home.

Each family was taped three times, when kids were 1, 2, and 3 and from the tapes, researchers identified instances in which parents praised them and classified that praise as process, person, or all other types of praise.

The researchers followed up with the children five years later when they were 7 to 8-year-olds, and gauged whether they preferred challenging versus easy tasks, could figure out how to overcome setbacks, and believed that intelligence and personality traits can be developed.

When parents used more process praise while interacting with their children at home, they reported more positive approaches to challenges five years later, could think of more strategies to overcome setbacks, and believed that their traits could improve with effort.

The study has been published in the journal Child Development. (ANI)

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